21. From Elder Dave LeSueur

An excerpt from a letter I received while serving in Rio de Janeiro in June 1969 from Dave LeSueur, a friend from my freshman year at Brigham Young University, who was then serving in the Franco-Belgian Mission.

The Church, and Church members, are the same, the world over, and I’m sure our experiences are very similar in some cases. I have spent all of my mission so far in Belgium. The people are polite, and once you are friends, you are treated as a member of the family. Like much of the world, the people are tied down by traditions.

I quoted this paragraph in my missionary journal under date of June 4, 1969, and then wrote:

“That last line is significant. Although the Brazilian people are warm and friendly and not really Catholics, they are still bound by traditions. Joseph Smith gives a stinging denunciation of traditions, speaking of persecutions ‘supported and urged on and upheld by the influence of that spirit which hath so strongly riveted the creeds of the fathers, who have inherited lies, upon the hearts of the children, and filled the whole world with confusion, and has been growing stronger and stronger, and is now the mainspring of all corruption, and the whole earth groans under the weight of its iniquity. It is an iron yoke, it is a strong band; they are the very handcuffs, and chains, and shackles, and fetters of hell’ (D&C 123:7–8).”